He
Lives! [9:42 PM
EDT]Finally got my FTP straightened out (full explanation of where I've been
is Out of the Blue). Here's the update I hoped to posted in the wee hours: I have not
tried to catch up more as I write this, but now that I can upload again, I'll try to get
caught up ASAP (still could be quite late, after some food and perhaps some merriment).

New
Kali [9:42 PM
EDT]Version 1.5 of Kali95 is now
available on their FTP site, as usual a bit in advance of any mention on their website,
but Chris Tuttle who passes along this news says the new release is mainly new game
support (ahh, but which games?).

Your Own Sin Easter Egg [9:42 PM EDT]
Well, since I can't upload this page as I'm writing this, it's probably too late to be
useful, but Charlie Wiederhold's .plan has an update on how a couple of folks will
be able to write a couple of Easter eggs for Sin.

WarGames
Demo [9:42 PM
EDT]
Also ganked from VE is word that there's a WarGames demo up on GameSpot that's a 3D accelerated RTS based on the
movie ("How about Global Thermonuclear War?").

Stereo
3D Mania [9:42
PM EDT]H3D Entertainment, Inc has announced that with Wicked3D's new WickedVision, that there are now more
than 50 games offering H3D stereo support. A special offer is available on the glasses
alone, or bundled with a Wicked3D for a limited time.

New
Oak II [9:42 PM
EDT]
A new version 0.4 of the Oak II Bot is out.
Looks like the Oak author is going to put together a Rocket Arena 2 type mod to create
bots for, since the source for RA2 is not available.s

Blood2
Arms Control
[9:42 PM EDT]
Monolith's Jay Wilson updated his
.plan with word that defense cutbacks have reached al the way to their upcoming
Blood2, which is to contain fewer weapons than originally planned, though I think it's
safe to say 21 is still more weapons than most games offer:

We haven't really announced this
anywhere, other than simply mentioning that we were in the trimming and cutting stages of
development, but since I see regular posts on the Blood forum about the number of weapons
in B2 I'll make it official. We've cut a few weapons from that original list of 30. Some
were cut because of time, but most were cut because of redundancy and game balance.
Basically, we eliminated any weapons that didn't serve a unique function, seemed out of
place, etc. Our trimmed down list consists of 21 weapons. Almost all the announced weapons
have remained. There are a few that we changed cosmetically. For example, the
rocket/grenade launcher is now the Napalm Launcher, an improved version of Blood's
original weapon of fire and destruction. Rest assured that these changes will only improve
Blood 2 as a game, since they will allow us to spend more time perfecting and balancing
the weapons that have made the cut. Also, we're keeping some of the best remnants of those
that didn't make the cut, we may still re-work them for a Blood 2 add-on. We'll be doing
an update to the weapon's page on the B2 site in the not too distant future to show off
the improvements we've made. It is our goal to make the most awesome and powerful arsenal
ever seen in a 3D shooter, and I think we are well on our way to that goal. :)

Wulfram
Beta [9:42 PM
EDT]
A free beta of a multiplayer action/strategy hybrid called Wulfram (looks a bit
BattleZone-esque) is up on TEN. Thanks
[EH-2]NukeWinter.

ION: Dominion Patch, Deus Ex Genre [9:42 PM EDT]
Word in the news over on ION Storm's website is
that a patch for the full version of Dominion: Storm Over GIFT 3, is now available.
There's also a reprinting there of a letter from Warren Spector to GameCenter correcting
their description of Deus Ex as an action game, where he says "It's first-person
perspective roleplaying game, plain and simple."

Quake
Console Commands
[9:42 PM EDT]
Though admittedly not as timely as it could be, Jack Frost's Quake Console Commands
is probably the most comprehensive such document I've seen (I'll brace for a slew of
corrections having made such a broad statement). Also, Jack passes word of his updated
scripts for Quake, also fairly comprehensive, offering settings for Action Quake, Catch
The Chicken, Expert, Freeze Tag, JailBreak, Lithium II, Loki's Minions CTF, PowerBall,
Rocket Arena 2, Superheroes II, Threewave CTF, and ThunderWalker CTF. Available on the PQ Download
Center.s

ZDoom [9:42 PM EDT]
Version 1.14 of ZDoom - Doom for Win32 (including
NT) is now available. ZDoom builds on the publicly available Doom source to add features
like mlook, jumping, higher resolutions, a console translucent, and much more.s

etc. [9:42 PM EDT]
The PQ gang have opened up another planet in their ever-expanding universe, PlanetFortress is devoted to all the doings in
the TeamFortress scene ... Here are a few PowerBall
2.0 servers: motw.quake2.inet.fi:27940; pb.quake2.inet.fi:27940; and
powerball.quake2.inet.fi:27940 ... PC Gamer sends a reminder that their Quake 2 Mod Contest
concludes Friday, July 31 at midnight Pacific Time. Among what's up for grabs is $2,000, a
Voodoo 2 from Creative and 3Dfx, and a signed copy of Quake II ...s

Out
of the Blue
[9:42 PM EDT]
What an amazing day I had yesterday. I had a connecting flight to catch in Pittsburgh, and
thunderstorms on the east coast delayed my arrival there just long enough to miss it, and
of course that flight was the last one to leave Pittsburgh on time for the rest of the
day, so I ended up with a seven hour layover (the Pittsburgh airport is one big shopping
mall: conspiracy theorists could have a ball with this). And now I find myself locked out
of my own FTP, and so, though I wrote this update in the wee hours, I can't upload it. I
doubt that was a very worthwhile story for anyone, but I feel a bit better for having
shared, thanks =]

I've recently done some contract work
for Team Evolve's upcoming Quake 2 mission pack: Zaero. What I like about it most so far
is some of the really cool new weapons (some DM only, those are really fun), and the fact
that we actually made a new boss unlike some other mission packs. ;)
There should be a lot of info on it and screenshots released soon, but until then, check
out the Team Evolve web site athttp://www.teamevolve.com

No hint yet whether this project is authorized by id or not, though John Callaham
points out that the release date listing on EB World
lists the project's publisher as Simon & Schuster, who recently made agreements with
Activision to release authorized Dark Reign and BattleZone add-ons. The release date they
give is August 20, 1998.

Blizzard
Departures [9:00
AM EDT]Ten Resign
from Blizzard is a Next-Generation
article that talks of the resignation of ten employees from Blizzard Entertainment,
including James Phinney, one of the producers and designers of StarCraft. The article
discusses a few of the reasons behind the resignations of the group, who are apparently
forming a start-up development studio, though no mention is made of the factors mentioned
in James Anhalt's .plan (story).

Sin
Movie [4:24 AM
EDT]GameCenter
has posted another SiN
Movie in AVI format (around 4 MB) gearing up for the playable demo release, still
slated for this Sunday. The page offers a warning: "As you'll see from the clip, SiN
isn't kiddie entertainment. It's tough stuff with lots of firepower and over-the-top
combat." Thanks Darren Day.

Earthquake II TC [4:24 AM EDT]Described as a TeamFortress style mode for Quake II, version 0.69 of the Earthquake II TC is now available, as a
preview of the mod. This version offers three new maps and six classes.

Artists that are interested must
design and create a piece of conceptual art (art that you design to capture a peticular
scene you, the artist, wants to see (i.e. Government Grunt chasing after you down a
hallway with grunts at the other end of the hallway shooting rockets or bullets at you).
This art will either be sent via mail (for those of you who draw on paper and have a
scanner or can get it scanned at office max) or via e-mail (for those of you who have the
ability to design and create art with a artwork program) for the Valve Software artists to
judge. The winners will receive Half-Life accessories courtesy of Valve Software.

Tourneys [4:24 AM EDT]This Online Gaming League is running a
bunch of ladders, some with several divisions: CTF (Open, Modem, and European divisions);
Rocket Arena; Deathmatch (Open, Modem, European divisions); and LM-CTF. Speaking of
LMCTF, that's the focus of The Ragnarok, A
Loki's Minions CTF Tournament, planned for Jacksonville, FL for July 31 to August 2.
also the infamous Wu-Tang Clan is having a big
tourney to celebrate their second anniversary. Also, the World Quake League is the first Quake Arena league
I've heard of (with good reason), and they have just announce their inaugural 1999-2000
season.

Out
of the Blue
[4:24 AM EDT]I'm gearing up to fly to Dallas mid-morning today, and will be back in the
Blue Tower Monday evening. I'll only find out when I'm there how well I do in remote
access, there's a possibility I will have technical difficulties sending email (as opposed
to my normal non-technical difficulties sending mail), either way, if you have something
you want to write me about that's not a news story, you may want to wait until next week.

Daikatana Double Feature [9:06 PM EDT]Daikatana.Com has a feature up on
what the team is working on for the game currently, as well as a new Daikatana background,
suitable for wallpaper depicting Hiro Miyamoto

New
jawMD2 [5:11 PM
EDT]A new version of the jawMD2 Quake II model viewing program is out on the
just relocated jawMD2 Homepage. The big news is
the new version is now freeware, and now offers pixel-detail zooming.

New
Messiah Shots
[5:03 PM EDT]Processed News has scored some
screenshots from Shiny of their upcoming Messiah. He's posted three today with the promise
of the rest tomorrow.

In addition, two new processors are
officially being unveiled: Coppermine, a desktop and mobile processor family, and Cascade,
a processor geared toward workstations and servers. Both will appear sometime in the
second half of 1999 and adopt the new .18micron process. However, speeds, cache sizes, and
branding are undetermined at this point.

Messiah Movies Vivo-ized [12:12 PM EDT]Jeremy over at AGN3D is on his way to
becoming to Vivo encoding what
JUDGECAL is to RealPlayer, converting everything he can get his hands on. Today the
Vivomeister posted the Messiah AVIs from earlier (story)
in Vivo format to be easier on your bandwidth.

Quake
Arena FAQ [10:21
AM EDT]The Frequently Asked Questions for the game formerly known as Quake III
has gotten a similar name update as the Unofficial Quake III FAQ (or I should say one of
the several Quake III FAQs) has become the Unofficial
Quake Arena FAQ, now starting over at version 0.01. Interestingly this FAQ
contains not even a single question.

"Just to let you know, I tried
replacing the PURE3D2T.DLL file as was suggested and it worked like a charm. Battlezone,
which was crashing my Pentium II 400 all over the place, now runs great. Finding an older
file is no problem. All anyone has to do is copy the file from the driver CD that came
with your Pure 3D II and copy it over the one that was included in the latest
release."

Unreal Meets Dig-Dug [6:50 AM EDT]Oddities has posted
their latest odd Unreal modification, the Dig-Dug gun. If you are unfamiliar with the
sublime thrill that is/was Dig-Dug, the weapon of choice here is a dart gun that will
inflate your victim with air until he makes like Yaphet Kotto at the end of Live and
Let Die.

Four Portals Source [6:50 AM EDT]Team Spleen HQ has
released the source and all accompanying materials from their recently released Quake II
movie Four Portals (they say they plan on always releasing such materials with their
projects). There is also extensive technical info on their page that should be helpful to
other movie makers.

Spec Ops Software AWAL Patch [6:50 AM EDT]SpecOps.Org has posted
the software renderer version of the AWAL (All Weapons All Levels) patch for Spec Ops
(thanks busy Billy at Voodoo Extreme). Also,
seems the first version of the 3Dfx patch up there was corrupted, so if you had troubles
with that, it should be good to go now.

BattleZone and Pure3D II [6:50 AM EDT]Sean Parque passes along a reply he got from Activision to his email about
BattleZone's failure to work with the latest Pure3D II drivers:

Although I hate to blame another
company, the problem is with the latest drivers from Canopus. Any version of Battlezone,
from 1.0 to 1.31, will not work. It's not the best solution, but for right now, we are
telling customers with Canopus Pure3D II cards to go back to the old drivers that came
with their card.

What
They Said [6:50
AM EDT]James Anhalt (Redline Games),
updated his .plan with word on some of the fallout at Blizzard over the "accounting
irregularities" recently found at Cendant (thanks PSX at Ritualistic). Also, Mike Werckle (Chaos) wrote a
tongue-in-cheek sympathy update
in his .plan for the producers at Activision who "suffer under RITUAL and
RAVEN:"

Out
of the Blue
[6:50 AM EDT]Gearing up for the trip to Dallas. Got my SPF 2000 (proven to forestall
human combustion for up to 20 minutes!), and I have hopes of doing a better job than usual
of getting the site updated while on the road (kinda sucks to have a road trip torpedo the
site for several days). Things seem promising in that area, but as always, the proof will
be in the pudding (it always is, just ask Bill Cosby).

Frag Master, a two handed game
control designed specifically for first person shooter games such as Quake, Duke
Nukem 3D and Unreal, is the first controller of its type to utilize both hands
to control a single device. Frag Masters unique ergonomic design gives novice users
higher accuracy in their shooting, and allows them to easily perform difficult maneuvers
such as the popular circle strafe. Experienced gamers will appreciate the exclusive
"MegaHurts" mode which has the same performance and speed of a mouse (the
most popular device for use with this type of game), but gives the user optimum control by
using both hands.

S3
and Tom [11:05
PM EDT]I got the following mail from Paul Crossley of S3 Incorporated:

Saw your link to the 3D accelerator review on
tomshardware.com and just wanted to send part of a response I posted on Dimension3D:

".....Bottom line, as evidenced by reviews
on bootnet, c/net GameCenter, Cyrellis3D, GameSpot, Next-Generation Online and OGR, the
numbers posted on tomshardware.com are incorrect. While I don't know the origins of the
board that Tom has (it looks to be an early "first silicon" rev. being tested
with Vsynch on.), the results it generated are clearly not representative of the
performance levels Savage3D is capable of.

Tom rarely makes mistakes and we like to think
we're perfect, but in this case something is out of whack. Suffice to say that we're
working with Tom to get back on track."

Crack Texture CD [8:30 PM EDT]Word comes from Crack dot Com that they're making a CD of some textures
available for purchase:

Crack dot Com, developer of the
cult-hit Abuse and the anticipated 3D real-time strategy title Golgotha, has made
available a CD specifically tailored for game artists titled "Game Textures
CD1".

Crack dot Com released "Game
Textures CD1" today for sale. CD1 is a compilation of textures gathered from
outdoor environments, buidling faces, and military and civilian vehicles. These
high-resolution textures were specifically designed by Crack artist Kevin Tyler for use by
game artists who demand high-detail tileable textures for use in 3D games, and many of the
textures appear in Crack's upcoming title Golgotha.

CD1 is currently available only
directly through Crack dot Com. An order form and index of the textures is available at http://crack.com. For more information about Game Textures
CD1, e-mail textures@crack.com.

Details on the AGP Pro interface
specification, included as an addendum to the AGP Interface Specification Rev 2.0, can be
found at www.agpforum.org.

AGP Pro is expected to deliver up to
four times the electrical power of today's AGP interface specification. It includes an
enhanced connector, improved cooling system, form factor specifications such as graphics
card size, and layout specifications to meet the demands of workstation graphics users on
both IA-32 and IA-64(TM) platforms. The new specification will be supported in both AGP2X
and AGP4X modes. AGP Pro includes advanced capabilities such as high-performance single
and multiple image display, integrated video and 3-D functionality, and advanced realism.
These features will significantly improve performance for users of simulation, mechanical
CAD, financial modeling and digital content creation applications.

Alt.Hype.Banshee [6:58 PM EDT]3 Fingers sends word
that 3Dfx has a new newsgroup on their news server (News Server: 3dfx.news.com) dedicated
to discussions of their upcoming Voodoo Banshee accelerator. The new group is
3dfx.products.voodoobanshee.

Quake Announce Moderator [2:09 PM EDT]Bad Mr. Frosty sends word that he's the new moderator for
rec.games.computer.quake.announce, so posting to that newsgroup can re-commence.

Out
and About [2:09
PM EDT]Out and about for a couple of hours... for snicks and giggles, here's the funniest link I've seen in a long time (or
maybe it's just me). Peep! Thanks toe. Oh yeah, it turns out I am indeed going to make it
to Dallas this weekend to help with the spontaneous human combustion experiments.

Vintage id/Apogee Interview [12:14 PM EDT]Joe "Dopefish" Siegler has posted an old NBR newscast on the Apogee/3D Realms Site that is a profile of Apogee and
id from back in 1992, talking with Apogee's George Broussard and Scott Miller about
shareware and id Software. The profile also speaks briefly with John Romero (sporting a
nifty John Stamos look), then of id software, who's seen hard at play with Jay Wilbur
(also at id at the time). Here's a local copy of the profile
(6.0 MB, zipped) in RealPlayer format (the link on the
3D Realms site is to GamesNET's copy since Joe was
having trouble with his FTP today). Here's the word from the page:

The other day I was going through
some videotapes of mine, and found this little tidbit of Apogee history. It's
a 2.5 minute long interview with Scott Miller & George Broussard done in the summer of
1992. It aired back home in Philadelphia in November of 1992 on the NBR show that is
on PBS. It was a report on Apogee (and id Software) and how we were changing the
face of computer gaming.

This interview was done in the post
Wolfenstein 3D hysteria (as Wolfenstein is all over this video), and also has an interview
with John Romero (now of Ion Storm). In addition to Scott, George, & John, you can
also see some others in the background (but don't talk) - our own Steve Blackburn, as well
as Jay Wilbur, John Carmack, Adrian Carmack, and I believe Kevin Cloud of id Software.

Monolith Production's
"Shogo", currently scheduled to ship in October and tipped to be one of the
hottest games of the year, will be followed by an extension pack currently being developed
by Instant Access. Greg Rice, Managing Director of Instant Access said, "We are
extremely pleased to be working with Monolith. Shogo is going to be one of the most
spectacular games of the year, it will develop a following amongst game fans who will
crave more once they have conquered the original, and this extension pack will keep that
momentum alive".

Around 20 completely new MCA and
on-foot missions to tax even the hardiest game player

Totally new weapons for both MCA and
on-foot modes.

New enemies and allied AIs.

A logical progression of the Shogo
storyline will introduce new characters and continue the Anime-themed cinematic feel
integral to the original game.

The extension pack will give players
hundreds of hours of additional gameplay. Jason Hall, C.E.O of Monolith Productions said
"This is a great deal for everyone, the customer gets extended life for Shogo, We can
focus on future development with the knowledge that there will be a follow up product
which will extend the life and interest in Shogo, and with advance information and
proprietary tools, Instant Access will create a great follow up product that will be out
within 3 months of the original".

The Shogo extension pack is scheduled
to ship in December 1998 and will be co-published by Monolith Productions and Instant
Access International. Distribution for North America, Japan and Russia will be managed by
Monolith. Distribution for all other territories will be managed by Instant Access.

CU-See
the CPL [10:20
AM EDT]The CU-SeeMe
Online Events Calendar has word of live video coverage of this weekend's CPL event in Dallas and a free temporary CU-See Me
serial number so you can use a copy of this video-conferencing software to check out the
live festivities. On a side note, I may have spoken too soon about my attending the event
myself, arrangements are being a pain this late in the game. We'll see.

Lithium
Quake II [9:11
AM EDT]Version 1.16 of the Lithium
II Mod for Quake II is out, with versions available for Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
The new version has VWep support built-in (IT can be toggled on the client end like
Q2 v3.15+ with cl_vwep), admins can now add and remove bans in-game, and a number of bugs
have been fixed.

Quakeadelica, UK Thresh Challenge [9:11 AM EDT]NetGamer has word of a search for the UK's greatest
Quake player kicking off today as Wireplay plans a
series of heats throughout September to find a challenger to take on Thresh in a mid
October event called Quakeadelica, a winner-takes-all deathmatch in London.

GX Quake II Tourney Mod [3:49 AM EDT]The first beta release of the Gamers
Extreme Tournament Mod for Quake II is out. This mod is designed to manage team
matches as well as one-on-ones, offering what is described as a comprehensive voting
system, three chasecam modes, and control over many different types of matches including
practice modes. It's a server only mod and you must submit your email address to download
it.

Out of the Blue [3:49 AM EDT]I kinda waffled on attending the CPL thing, but I've decided to go. The
neat thing about waiting until the last minute like that is that airfare only costs like a
million dollars (the BlueJet is in the shop).

Yet, the mainstreaming of Unreal does
not discourage me, because I know the best is yet to come: there is a tremendous amount of
new progress being made in the Unreal community toward new mods, new levels, and new
tools. We have a lot enhancements in the queue, and our partners such as Legend
Entertainment, Ion Storm, and 3D Realms are coaxing the engine into doing things we didn't
dream possible. And, the team is beginning to see a rough outline of the things to come
for our next project, and some of the possibilities are immensely exciting.

Right now, we have no official
'release date'. We hoping for Q1 '99. We used to be hoping for the end of this year, but
there's just too much cool stuff we wanted in the game we're not going to cut just to make
some date. EA's got a nice plan for us...If you haven't heard an official 'release date'
directly from them, than any release date you've heard is conjecture.

The systems have to be solid, the
game has to be insanely rich in content and the engine has to be cutting edge, or it's not
'done'.

It's really damn cool to me that some
dudes seem to be anticipating the game so much that it hurts them to hear that it may come
out later than the end of this year. I'm sorry it hurts, but I'm hyped that there's so
much concern about whether or not it's late.

Anyway, as far as I can figure, we're
not late, we hope not to be late and if we are late it's only to make the game better.
Since we've not announced an official release date, the definiiton of late is TBD.

So, I'll say it again: We have not
officially declared a release date. Any 'estimations' that have been out there have been
made with a clear understanding that things change, development is dynamic and the only
real ship date can't be found on a calender, but within the quality of the product.

So, this industry doctrine of unknown
origin is just about the sweetest thing developers who care about quality have ever heard:

"A late game is only late until
it ships. A crappy game is crappy for eternity."

DEMentED
II Derailed
[8:30 PM EDT]The home of the Quake II demo editor, DEMentED II, has word that the
reason so little has been heard from this project lately is that the author has been hired
by Surreal Software as a game programmer. He hopes
to return to it to finish some things off, but it is uncertain when. Thanks Woburn.

id's
New Hire [6:44
PM EDT]id finally sent around an announcement with word on their new Director of
Business Development Anna Kang:

id Software appointed Anna Kang as
Director of Business Development. Kang brings her experience as the creator and producer
of the QUAKE(tm) All-Female Tournament (AFT), an on-line gaming competition for women. She
will be responsible for overseeing business issues, marketing opportunities and public
relations. "id Software continues the tradition of hiring quality talent," said
Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. "Anna's work on the AFT is a remarkable
showcase of her marketing abilities while highlighting her overwhelming respect for the
world of gaming." As a result of Kang's commitment to the AFT, the event secured
coverage in countless media outlets, from Newsweek and New York Times to Wired and CNN. In
addition to that success, she also brings her business expertise as vice president of
marketing for Toucan Enterprises, a telecommunications company and as director of
marketing at the west coast based franchise, Koo Koo Roo, Inc. "I have a great
appreciation of the awesome games developed by id Software and an even greater admiration
for the team behind the success of this cultural phenomenon," said Kang, Director of
Business Development for id Software. "id Software leads 3D gaming. They forged DOOM
and QUAKE, who wouldn't be proud of being a part of this team? id Software pushes the
envelope every time they develop a new game and I'm proud to be a part of that. I'm
looking forward to growing with this influential company for years to come."

Voodoo2 Reference Drivers [6:44 PM EDT]The Voodoo2 Drivers for
Windows 95/98 page has another new set of Voodoo2 reference drivers. These are the
drivers released by Creative Labs recently (story),
without the need to sign up. The release includes Glide 2.53, Glide 3, Direct3D, DirectX
and the Voodoo2 Control Panel, described as "the minimum set of drivers that you'll
need to run your Voodoo2 board," and a separate file is available with a control
panel that to allow you to disable v-sync, sacrificing WHQL compliance. Thanks Billy
"Compliance" Wilson, Voodoo Extreme.

Crack's
Situation [3:13
PM EDT]Dave Taylor, ex-id Software programmer, and current Crack dot Com head-dude, made a very serious update
to his .plan today, showing the difficult road taken by the small independent
developer. Here's hoping things work out well here:

Conventional biz wisdom says you
shouldn't announce this sorta thing, but I do so because of an annoying decency streak. So
before the rumors start to fly, I should announce that Crack is in deep financial shit.
We're not in debt and refuse to enter debt, but we just ran out of cash and are not making
payroll. We have a lot of potential opportunities, but the easy ones tend to be short-term
band-aid-ish opportunities that detract from the company mission, which is Golgotha,
Golgotha, and oh yes, Golgotha. Those of us financially stable enough to weather some time
without being paid will stay on. We're all confident the money will come in, including
those of us who can't afford the loss of income. There is just too much value in the
project, it's inexpensive to complete, and there are too many opportunities even outside
Golgotha. But two of us, Gene & Stephen, don't have the reserves to miss a single
payroll, so I'd like to help place them at other companies. Gene is a simply brilliant
composer, and it will totally hurt to lose him. I count my lucky stars that we at least
got the game's soundtrack done. Whoever gets Gene wins The Big Prize. I've worked with a
few great composers, including Bobby Prince, Thomas Dolby, and Trent Reznor, and I know
what I'm talking about. Gene is the shit. Stephen is an absolute expert at all things
military, passionate about it, and a damn good artist when it comes to modelling,
texturing, and animating the same. He's a consistent source of excellent, pragmatic design
ideas, he's ex-military, and a perfect employee to groom as a lead designer or producer.
You can check out his portfolio & resume on his home page. Give me (or them) a write
if interested. I pride myself on rolling in all the good resumes, and these two guys are
real winners. My e-mail is ddt@crack.com. Theirs are gene@crack.com and stephen@crack.com.
Anyway, wanted to dispell any rumors that we've "closed our doors." We've
tightened our belts, we're now working on our personal dimes, and our eyes have a few more
bags under them, but Crack isn't yet headed for the crapper.

Links
Page [3:03 PM
EDT]I got a few requests in the last couple of days to update the ole Links page here, and since the newsdesk has been
fairly quiet this afternoon (cue crickets: *chirp, chirp*), I dusted the page off and made
a go of updating it. Feel free to send corrections and additions here (simply blue@bluesnews.com, with a Subject "Link
Page"). I'm sure I've forgotten some very obvious and important things, so if it's
your project I neglected, please don't be offended, just let me know (otoh, please
understand if you send me a link that doesn't seem to share something in common with the
ones already posted, it may not be suitable).

First of all I would like to remind
you that this is a PREview, not a review of final products. TNT is at very early stage,
but all the other chips will certainly go through several improvements as well.

What we can say now though is that
Savage3D did certainly NOT live up to the claims of 'Voodoo2 performance at S3 prices'. As
a matter of fact Savage3D is not by far as fast as Voodoo2, it's not as fast as Voodoo
Banshee and Voodoo Banshee is selling for almost the same price as Savage3D. Savage3D will
be an interesting competitor to Matrox' G200, since those two seem pretty close to each
other, also in terms of 3D quality. G200 has an edge with its larger local memory support
of 16 MB though.

The real winner of this test is still
a dual Voodoo2 in SLI mode. I estimate that nothing will come close to it until 3Dfx will
release their next Voodoo3 (?) chip.

South
Park Quake II
[10:40 AM EDT]South Park Quake II,
the mod that stays dead about as well as Kenny, has released an alpha version of the
project from a few months back and a test map that is said to contain a never-before seen
surprise (thanks squire). Okay, so what is the deal with Kenny in this project? Here:

For those of you who've asked, Kenny
does not have a weapon, nor can he pick one up, or steal one from someone else's uncle.
Kill him, you lose a point, and he gets a point.

In the first in what will be a series
of Designer Diaries chronicling the Shadows of Reality development process, we demonstrate
the steps that took place during our first cyberspace prototype. Follow along as we go
from empty world to a fully realized Data Fortress. Screenshots included

Action
Quake2 [3:45 AM
EDT]A server-only version 0.94 upgrade to Action Quake2 is now available. The new release
tweaks falling damage and a couple of weapons, fixes a couple of bugs that occurred while
bandaging, and re-adds the semi-automatic pistol. Thanks Loe.

Eye
Carumba! [3:45
AM EDT]Seems folks are enjoying the idea of playing eye for an eye with LEC over
this eye logo dealie with Remedy (story. and follow-up).
QuakePsycho points out that Time Warner Cable
and NVIDIA
both share the eye theme, and there were many to point out the granddaddy of them all, but
Raul Rios was first, and he even sent a visual aide:

Question: From what we gather
you're currently working on Sin. So where might we have sampled your work in days gone by?

Levelord: Well, I have done a
few levels before, but nothing significant until SiN. It's all been 'warm up' until now ;)

QuArK
RingMap Site
[9:35 PM EDT]The QuArK Ring-Map Site is a
chain-map style site for users of the QuArK
map editor, where each mapper works on his own copy of the map which are eventually
re-circulated, hence ring-map instead of chain-map.

Unreal Energy Drain Gun [9:35 PM EDT]Oddities has their
latest Unreal mod, which is not as odd as much of their work: It's a refined version of
the ASMD Gun where the alternate-fire projectile is a a tazer-ball that will stick to its
target and drain the target of health, and then will return to the firer and imbue him
with the "stolen" health.

New
Chaos DM [2:18
PM EDT]Chaos Deathmatch for QuakeII
version 1.02 is out, offering many enhancements for a more LAN and Internet friendly mod,
as well as a new Respawn-Invulnerability, greater configurability, and some bug fixes.

QuakeMovie
Beta 5 [12:16 PM
EDT]QuakeMovie Homepage has
posted beta 5 of QuakeMovie, the in-Quake demo filming aide along with the source code.
The new version adds a load of new features, including Fades and Gamma flashes, a
completed in-Quake help system, two new morphs, and the availability of cheats in
deathmatch to help with special effects. The next version will be the first official
non-beta release.

Ladder
Utility [12:16
PM EDT]Rage-on HQ, has word
of the Rage-on utility, designed to easily allow those running ladders to post results on
a webpage. There's a sample of the program up to try before you see if you want to spring
the £10 Sterling or $20 US that the proggie costs.

onethumb's Sound Thinking [12:16 PM EDT]Ritual's single digit Jedi Master updated
his .plan and then added a
follow-up with some sound advice on sound cards talking about the strengths of the A3D
PCI cards, giving one thumb up (sorry, the best he can do) to the Turtle Beach Montego PCI
specifically.

I can add here that I picked up one of those very cards recently and just love it. The
midi sounds like crap (I believe a daughter board or something can be added if this really
bothers you), but everything else about this card is terrific, including a small framerate
increase in Quake, the ability to play sounds that would preempt each other on many other
sound-cards (play .mp3s during Quake -- sweet!), and all that cool 3D positional stuff in
hardware (check out games like Unreal that address this -- very cool), and priced to sell.
I'd have to give Montego PCI two thumbs-up myself (not to one-up onethumb or anything). I
totally dig it.

Heretic 2's moving along really
well... a lot of minor control issues are going away and the cool little details are
starting to emerge. I'm starting to feel really good about it and how everything's going
with my maps. The fire kicks ass, the gore and severed limbs fly freely (well, when you
use your halberd... tough to sever limbs with a fireball), and the AI stuff is getting
really neat. The buoys give enough control that monsters can be made to do some really
interesting, complicated stuff if the situation calls for it.

Expert
Quake II [2:19
AM EDT - Updated 12:16 EDT]Version 2.4 of Expert for
Quake II is out. The new release works around a friction problem with the expert
grapple and Quake II 3.17, and fixes and tweaks a few other things.

More on OpenGL People have been
asking about performance on other cards such as the ATI Rage Pro, Permedia, and some
high-end OpenGL accelerators. I don't have any numbers on these cards, but the OpenGL
alpha will be out soon enough, so people will be able to check them out and compare
numbers.

Keith Leonard @ DreamForge (one of
the two programmers working on the Unreal OpenGL support) reports that the Rendition v2200
is now up and running slightly faster than Voodoo 1, thanks to a heroic programming effort
by Rendition on their OpenGL driver. He also feels that Intel i740 performance is mainly
being held back by their driver: the i740 hardware supports 8-bit textures but the OpenGL
driver does not -- so there is a possibility of much better performance if Intel enhances
their driver. It looks like driver optimization is going to be crucial.

Eclipse Entertainment has an opening
on Dragon for a programmer with experience developing bot AI. Dragon is a fighting
and exploration game set in a 3D world. Dragon will be published by Microsoft in
1999. We are looking for a programmer to work exclusively on the fighting and
path-finding AI.

You must live in Austin, Texas or be
willing to relocate. Eclipse offers a great work environment, competitive salaries,
stock options and a comprehensive benefits package. Experience is less important
than ability.

Out
of the Blue
[2:19 AM EDT]Thanks for all the nice letters to GrandmaBlue (I think I'll show them to
her). Funny, if I had started early enough, she could theoretically be a
great-great-grandmother right now... though I like to think I make up for the missing
pitter-patter of little feet by being especially immature. Image of the Day (now remember
this rarely works out to be daily) is the x-ray
with this news story
that shows the side effects of playing with nailguns (sounds like it waxed his FPU --
ouch!) Thanks Shinote.

Here's where it stands. With current
3D cards other than 3dfx, the OpenGL results are disappointing. 3dfx is the only current
hardware that is delivering great, steady performance for next-generation games.

The Riva 128 and i740 run slower than
the software renderer in complex scenes. They have serious performance problems due to an
inability to efficiently handle large quantities of high-res textures, dynamic lighting,
and algorithmic textures. We can't tell whether the performance problems are primarily in
their OpenGL drivers (which would be good, because the drivers could then be optimized),
or in the hardware itself (which means the performance problems are unsolvable on existing
hardware). We're working to squeeze out as much performance from the hardware as
possible, as are the hardware companies, but the results aren't very promising.

At the heart of the issue is texture
usage. Unreal levels use a huge quantity of textures. Our typical levels use 10-15
megabytes of 8-bit texture maps created by the Digital Extremes artists. In addition,
there are 10-40 megabytes of light map textures, which are created on-the-fly as you run
around the levels. We try to design our most complex scenes so that just under 2 megs of
textures are visible, keeping visible detail to a maximum. In addition, Unreal's rendering
approach calls for switching among textures many times during rendering.

I'd just like to add my thoughts to
the comments recently expressed on Bluesnews and Redwoods, regarding the mouse sampling
issue.

Firstly, 10hz mouse sampling is not
correct, the mouse is actually sampled every frame by the engine, yet Windows only returns
NEW data every 25ms. So if you are to have more than one client frame rendered within the
25ms gap between mouse samples, you are going to get no change for some of them, and then
a new result once the 25ms has elapsed.

Now, what Thresh was talking about (I
believe), was the method the engine uses to smooth out the appearance and movement of
objects in the game. What this method results in, is the VISUALIZATION of objects, at up
to 0.1 (+ network lag) of a second behind where they ACTUALLY are. Each time the server
sends the client's new position and orientation information, that data is used to smoothly
move that object over the next 0.1 seconds. So therefore, you won't actually see that
object in the new position, until 0.1 of a second after the server actually moved it
there. Add in network lag, and that figure could rise even higher.

QW used to send this data every 0.05
of a second, and didn't have interpolation, so the visualization delay was much lower
(pretty much restricted to network lag).

That having been said, Redwood was
completely accurate in his comments. Quake2 uses the "fluid graphics" method of
interpolation (but with added lag), whilst QW used the "jerky graphics", with
more accurate representation of the actual data.

However, both Q2 and QW suffer from
the mouse sampling issues, which effects systems running at over 30 fps, but should only
be noticable to the advanced player.

The screenshot is 2 months old,
showing a beta version of colored lighting in software mode. It has been confirmed by slam
(our engine developer) that colored lighting will only appear in the hardware accellerated
version.

Don't Pass the BongThe Bong East LAN party
had a last minute change of venue, check the page if you are attending.

Out
of the Blue
[3:38 AM EDT]Off for the day to visit GrandmaBlue on her birthday, I will probably not
be home until quite late (grandma knows how to party!). Oh yeah, I'm definitely losing
mail =\